CMRB/Runnymede Trust Conference - 'Secularism, Racism and the Politics of Belonging' - 27 January 2011

Dear colleagues,

Following the highly successful conference 'Migration, Racism and Religion' in February, CMRB and Runnymede Trust are organising a follow up event which aims to explore some of the important themes that emerged from the last event.

The conference will address how questions of race, religion and religious affiliation operate in state policies and civil society in Britain and beyond. It examines how matters of faith are constructed in relation to old and new forms of racism and to other contemporary political projects of belonging. It considers the implications for citizenship and social solidarity in the context of “the Big Society”.

These issues will be examined in relation to specific questions which have occupied the British public in recent years: constructions of “faith communities” in relation to ethnic identities; the place of religion in equality legislation and legal pluralism; debates about dress codes; and the effect of particular forms of religious education, including separate faith schools. This conference will take these issues forward and promises to be highly charged.

Continuing with the inclusive and open format of previous events, this conference brings together academics and researchers, community activists, race equality groups, and leading figures from secular, Christian, Muslim and Jewish organisations.

As before, the event will be free of charge to attend and lunch and refreshments will be provided.

We would ask you to circulate these details to those you feel may be interested in participating in the discussion.

Further details are available at http://www.uel.ac.uk/cmrb/news.htm and will be updated regularly.

Kind regards,

Steve Thorpe

CMRB Administrator
s.thorpe@uel.ac.uk

www.uel.ac.uk/cmrb

CMRB Seminars in November

"Blaming the victims - Sarkozy and the plight of the Roma".

Speaker: Dr Jim Wolfreys, Kings College London.

Wednesday 17 November:2-5pm (Room TBC)

“Muslim Women and Marriage in Trans-jurisdictional Contexts”

Wednesday 24 November: 2-5pm in room EB.G.10

Speaker: Dr Prakash Shah, Queen Mary, University of London

How do immigration officials and judges manage when judging the validity of acts of marriage solemnisation, which take place on transjurisdictional terms? How do we explain their responses? These are some questions raised by this paper, which presents evidence gleaned from the writer’s

own work as an ‘expert’ witness in immigration cases. Two case studies have been selected on the basis that the chief issue in contestation is the validity of a trans-jurisdictional marriage among South Asian Muslims, and therefore raise the issue of whether the marriages are valid according

to Muslim law. The paper also raises some questions for future research, given that we know little as yet about how recognition of minority transjurisdictional marriages takes place across European legal systems and, in particular, the role of experts who get involved in the legal processes in which such marriages are contested.

UEL Docklands Campus is adjecent to Cyprus Station, Docklands Light Railway

Centre for Research for Migration, Refugees and Belonging - www.uel.ac.uk/cmrb

New CMRB Events Released

The Centre for Migration, Refugees and Belonging (CMRB) at UEL have just announced the following events for the 2010 Autumn semester:

Research Seminars:

Thursday 14 October: 2-5pm in room BS.3.04

“What’s happening in political asylum in 2010”?

Speaker: CMRB Visiting Fellow, Prof Carole Bohmer

Competing discourses of protection and control are predominant in present day asylum rhetoric. Satisfying these conflicting goals is impossible; states therefore must find a way to appear to meet both of these goals. How do they do it? This paper will attempt to answer that question and illustrate the sometimes absurd effects of this process, using the cases of the US and the UK which have been the focus of my research.

Wednesday 17 November: 2-5pm in room EB.G.10

"Blaming the victims - Sarkozy and the plight of the Roma".

Speaker: Dr Jim Wolfreys, Kings College London.

Wednesday 24 November: 2-5pm in room EB.G.10

“Muslim Women and Marriage in Trans-jurisdictional Contexts” Speaker: Dr Prakash Shah, Queen Mary, University of London How do immigration officials and judges manage when judging the validity of acts of marriage solemnisation, which take place on trans-jurisdictional terms? How do we explain their responses? These are some questions raised by this paper, which presents evidence gleaned from the writer’s own work as an ‘expert’ witness in immigration cases. Two case studies have been selected on the basis that the chief issue in contestation is the validity of a trans-jurisdictional marriage among South Asian Muslims, and therefore raise the issue of whether the marriages are valid according to Muslim law. The paper also raises some questions for future research, given that we know little as yet about how recognition of minority trans-jurisdictional marriages takes place across European legal systems and, in particular, the role of experts who get involved in the legal processes in which such marriages are contested.

Wednesday 1 December: 2-5pm in room EB.G.10

"Migrants and the security agenda: the global picture".

Speaker: Dr Khalid Koser, Geneva Centre for Security Policy.

Imaging Migrants Seminar Series

Imaging Migrants seminar series is collaboration between the Centre for

Research on Migration, Refugees and Belonging (CMRB), and Matrix East

Research Lab (MERL).

Monday 15 November: 4.00-5.30pm, Matrix East Research Lab, EB.1.37

"Journeys of Identity and Place"

Speaker: Jill Daniels

I will explore the representation of identity and place in exile and loss in my documentary films Next Year in Lerin (2000) and Lost in Gainesville (2005). The subjects in Next Year in Lerin are Macedonians, who as children were taken without their mothers from northern Greece by the Greek Communist Party during the Greek civil war (1943-1948) and are not

allowed by the Greek State to return to Greece. In Lost in Gainesville subjects from the Mexican diaspora located in a small town in Georgia in the south of the US face racist hostility, leading to the geographical division of place. I will also reflect on the way film may be used in the debate around minoritarian discourse through the way Next Year in Lerin has been taken up by the Macedonian diaspora and Greek nationalists as a tool for political

debate on YouTube.

Monday 29 November 4.00-5.30 pm, Matrix East Research Lab, EB.1.37

Speaker: Agnieszka Piotrowska

Agnieszka Piotrowska is a BBC trained, award winning and highly acclaimed documentary maker, nominated three times for an EMMY as well as for BAFTA for her film about domestic violence (2000). She has been the winner of the Fred Wiseman Master Class Award in Dublin (2005 for her film The Bigamist) as well as receiving distinctions and prizes at other

festivals. Her film last summer The Best Job in the World (BBC1 2009) was the highest rating programme for the whole week across all channels. Her CUTTING EDGE for Channel 4 about domestic violence (2000) has been called a definitive piece on the subject and was nominated for BAFTA. Her recent work includes a highly acclaimed documentary about a co-dependent relationship between anorexic female twins: Trapped by Mytwin (A Cutting

Edge for Channel 4) and a film about women who fall in love with objects and not people: Married to the Eiffel Tower (2008) which has become a cult documentary all over the world. She will show us clips of her films and talk about migrating both internal and external.

Monday 6th December 4.00-530pm, Martix East Research Lab, EB.1.37

"Digitizing Palestinian refugee narratives"

Speaker: Dr John Nassari

This session will explore the role of multi-media interactive technologies in the representation of Palestinian life and history in refugee camps in Lebanon. The session will examine work I produced in 2007-2008 that presents refugee camps in 360-degree QuickTime panoramas. The viewer navigates from alleyways to alleyways to homes where three generations of Palestinian refugees tell their life histories. The session will explore

methodological challenges of representing refugee lives.

Monday 13 December: 4.00-5.30pm, Matrix East Research Lab, EB.1.37

"The Powerless Image."

Speaker: Dr Anat Pick

The post-Soviet films of Artur Aristakisyan include some of the most striking images of poverty and up-rootedness of recent cinema. These images, however, function neither as documentary evidence of nor even as a bearing witness to post-Soviet realities. Pitted against the revolutionary modernism of Vertov and Eisenstein, I read Aristakisyan's cinema as an articulation of a paradox at the heart of leftist emancipatory politics: the desire for justice as sovereignty without power.

Spring and Summer Events 2011

Full dates and details to follow. However, in the new-year there will be a

conference on ‘Secularism, Racism and Contemporary Politics of Belonging’, jointly organized with the Runnymede Trust. In addition, CMRB will be in collaboration with the Refugee Studies Centre, Oxford University, organizing a seminar series dealing with key conceptual issues in forced migration.

Centre for Research on Migration, Refugees and Belonging - www.uel.ac.uk/cmrb

Giving voice to the voiceless - Public Lecture Series 4 March 2010

Portrayal and participation of asylum-seekers & refugees in the UK media

The Centre for Research on Migration, Refugees and Belonging & the Exiled Journalists' Network introducing Mike Jempson Director, The MediaWise Trust

Date: Thursday 4 March 2010 
Time: 17:00 
Venue: Room TBC, University of East London, Docklands Campus 
Transport: Cyprus DLR

In the mid-1990s, there was an upsurge in hostile and inaccurate coverage of refugee and asylum issues, and of those who supported them. The term asylum-seeker rapidly changed from being a sympathetic description to a form of abuse which combined fear and loathing of immigrants and more than a hint of racism.

Sensational stories and statistics, and xenophobic commentaries, variously represented those seeking asylum as economic migrants or criminals determined to abuse the goodwill of a post-colonial power. Such stories increased tabloid circulation and jolted politicians into knee-jerk negative reactions. By the time of the al Qaeda attack on the USA in 2001, asylum had become a major political issue. Now people identifiable as ‘strangers in our midst’ were regarded as menacing and dangerous, however long they had been in the UK.

Concerned that sensible political dialogue and human rights were being harmed by the way the media were handling issue, in 1999 the journalism ethics charity MediaWise set up the Refugees, Asylum-seekers and the Media (RAM) Project. It was a strategic initiative to challenge inaccuracies and prejudice and improve media coverage. It would also give birth to the Exiled Journalists’ Network (EJN).

This presentation will explain the work and achievements of the RAM Project revisit some of the more sensational inaccuracies that have appeared in the UK media, and explain how exiled journalists helped to develop the RAM Project, and took it forward to become the EJN.

MIKE JEMPSON has been Director of The MediaWise Trust since 1996. He co-founded the journalism ethics charity (then known as PressWise) with ‘survivors of media abuse’ in 1993. He is a journalist, author and trainer, with over 35 years experience in print, broadcasting and public relations. Mike co-authored The RAM Report (MediaWise, June 2005, ISBN 0 9547620 4 5)

Mike was appointed Visiting Professor in Media Ethics at Lincoln University in 2006, and is a Senior Lecturer in Journalism at the University of the West of England.  He has devised and delivered training for journalists and NGOs in more than 40 countries, working with UN agencies and the International Federation of Journalists.

Imaging Migrants: CMRB & Matrix Seminar Series at UEL

Imaging Migrants

a seminar series jointly organised by CMRB and Matrix

All seminars take place on Thursdays at 6-8pm in Room EB 1.37, Matrix, University of East London, Docklands Campus   

On ‘the right to have rights’ over refugees’ and migrants’ images - Eyal Sivan

Thursday 25 February

Refugees, migrants and other survivors – like many other socially displaced persons – are among the favourite classical, as well as contemporary, figures of documentary moving image practice. Thus, despite the ongoing practice involving documenting, filming, producing and distributing refugees’ images, issues of ‘representation rights’ and ‘images appropriation’ are rarely raised among practitioners and media activists. Drawing on Hannah Arendt’s classical article ‘We Refugees’ (1943), in which she develops the idea of ‘the right to have rights’, and on Giorgio Agamben’s reading of Arendt’s article, this seminar will reflect on the ethical and methodological questions raised by the ongoing practice involving the filming of migrants and refugees. Articulated around a series of recent documentary experiences, this seminar will address the question of the functionality – within western societies – of refugees’, migrants’ and asylum seekers’ images as a fundamental, contemporary documentary media practice.

State of Play: critique, diaspora and digital archives - Roshini Kempadoo

Thursday 25 March

The seminar will present a selection of my photographs and recent digital artworks including State of Play(2010) within the context of artworks from digital online databases, including those developed by Autograph ABP, Diaspora Artists and Iniva. It becomes a way to explore artists’ work that have been differentiated and defined within the confines of ‘identity’ terminologies and politics. Cultural definitions of artists and their work, ranging from: black Britishness; BAMEs; multiculturalism; transnational blackness; culturally diverse forms; and art of the diaspora, have variously been used – particularly since the ‘critical decade’ of the 1980s (Hall & Bailey, 1992). My interest lies in the practice of self-definition, criticality and positionality that have been instrumental to this process of defining difference and belonging. The presentation will also explore the way in which such artworks are currently being digitally archived by institutions, their curators, and funders. The archive as a ‘force field’ (Stoler, 2009) in this sense is crafted and layered. In re-contextualising and digitising the artworks as the online ‘archive’ (in the way that Derrida describes the archive as the site of ‘house arrest’), how may the criticality of the work be adequately evoked and continue to be perceived as creative intervention, interstitial, or counter-narrative?

Two Theses on the Afghan Woman: Samira and Hana Makhmalbaf Filming Agheleh Farahmand - Haim Bresheeth

Thursday 8 April

This talk is based on an article by the same title, that I have completed for Third Text, to be published in March 2010.

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have created a huge number of refugees, or as the UN now wishes them to called, internally displaced persons. Those two terrifying upheavals have not yet been attended to by many filmmakers – the Iraqi one is yet to be represented on film, and the Afghani one has indeed been so represented, but not by an Afghani filmmaker.

The appearance, in 2003, of two films made by two sisters of the famous Makhmalbaf cinematic clan, have marked another first for this unusual group. At Five in the Afternoon, a feminist feature film shot in Afghanistan a short time after the Allies invasion, by the elder sister Samira, has been closely followed byJoy of Madness, a feature length documentary by her 13 year old sister, Hanna. That Hanna’s film was a ‘making of’ film of her sister¹s movie production, does not begin to describe it. At the heart of both films stands the figure of the main lead of the feature, who is the central character of both. The struggle between the temperamental director and her intended star, ending in the agreement to participate, is presenting us with a complex picture of power relations and negotiation, between the darling of festival circles, Samira, and her penniless, but astute and independent young teacher from Afghanistan. Joy of Madness carries a genuine and disturbing message of the colonial power relations between the three women, and the acid test of their different feminist agendas.

Journeys of Identity and Place - Jill Daniels

Thursday 22 April

In this seminar I will explore the representation of identity and place in exile and loss, in my documentary filmNext Year in Lerin (2000).I will discuss, as Henk Slager points out in his article Art and Method (2009), how ‘the artist compels us to see the world in a different way… images do not replace reality, but reveal novel visibilities’. The film reflects on social structures, ethnicity and the concept of rootedness. Place is offered as a metaphorical space bounded by the subjects’ voices and the manipulation of sound and image.

The subjects are Macedonians, who as children were taken without their mothers from northern Greece by the Greek Communist Party during the Greek civil war (1943-1948). They are not allowed by the Greek State to return to Greece.I will analyse my access as outsider, addressing my subject position of both observing and participating in documentary making, in gaining an intimate space in order to interact with the subjects (David MacDougall, Transcultural Cinema; 1998).

I will extend the discussion through a comparison of this film with my later film Lost in Gainesville (2005), where subjects from the Mexican diaspora are located in a small town in Georgia in the south of the US.Racist hostility emanates from the original population of the town leading to the geographical division of place.

I reflect on the way film may be used in the debate around minoritarian discourse. Next Year in Lerin has been used by the Macedonian diaspora and Greek nationalists as a tool for their political debates. I give particular attention to my Q&A on YouTube posted by the film festival after a screening of the film in the US in 2009, and the subsequent comments. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MWw4o9QkAA.

Simone Weil's The Need for Roots and the Soul of Migration - Dr Anat Pick

Thursday 6 May

This seminar draws on Simone Weil's book The Need for Roots (1943), written during the final year of Weil's life, working in London for the Free French. The Need for Roots offered a blueprint for the reconstruction of France after Liberation. It reflects the culmination of Weil's theologico-political thinking. The central themes of rootedness (as a ‘need of the soul’) and uprootedness (as a modern malaise) are especially important for thinking about ideas of national identity, diaspora and exile. They are particularly resonant in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and in light of Weil's ‘anti-Judaism’. The discussion will address Weil's contemporary relevance as a major post-secular thinker with reference to Ori Kleiner’s documentary filmRecognized (2006).

Conference: Migration, the Media and the Message, 29-30 March 2010

Migration, the Media and the Message

Migrants using media to turn around the immigration debate

University of East London, 29-30 March 2010

A European conference jointly organised by the 'Migrants and the Media Project' (MMP) and CMRB for groups involved in media and cultural activities, which promote a positive engagement with the issue of migration.

Contributors to plenary sessions will include: Don Flynn (Migrants' Rights Network), Nazek Ramadan, Aine O'Brien (FOMACS, Ireland) and Mica Nava (UEL).

Workshops include: FOMACS' digital video-making and radio journalism (Ireland), CEPAIM's 'La Ruta Prometida ' exhibition (Spain), Mendek's poster campaign (Hungary), Migrant Resource Centre's 'New Londoners' journalism project (UK), Playback Theatre (UK), CRWI on women and the media (Greece).

For information, please contact: Cristina Andreatta at Migrants' Rights Networkc.andreatta@migrantsrights.org.uk